It has been said that when God saved us God took His greatest risk. Because the truth is the investment that came along with God bringing us into relationship with Himself is something that can not be fully comprehended and it is often something that is devalued and underappreciated. God is a God of relationship. And it is His desire to bring you and me back into relationship with Him.

• Relationships require commitment

• Relationships require reciprocity

• Relationships require sacrifice and the rendering of expressions and concern and care

God has been faithful at keeping his end of the relationship.

• The problem has not been with God but the problem has been with us.

Because we are wishy washy—we have our own agendas. We are prone to unfaithfulness. When the truth is that Jehovah, God—the Creator of the Universe—our Savior and Redeemer…looked beyond our faults and He supplied our needs.

Nowhere in the scripture will you see God’s love demonstrated in a profound way as it is exemplified and given in the book of Hosea. According the critical scholarship the book of Hosea is an autobiographical sketch that is written by Hosea about Hosea. Here we have a very interesting story that gives us a very vivid and clear cut picture about love of God for the people of God throughout eternity and time. Here God tells Hosea the prophet to go and marry a wife named Gomer. You will discover that Gomer is a prostitute, Gomer is a Harlot; Hosea is the man of God; called and equipped to carry the good news of the coming Messiah throughout Judea. Upon deeper and further investigation we discover that Hosea represents God; and Gomer represents and depicts the people of God who have a wicked tendency and hellish proclivity to stray and are unfaithful to Him and reject His love. Here we have a pattern of a woman of loose living and a shallow understanding of the value and virtue love. But the prophet marries this woman of loose living…this prostitute—in hopes of loving her out of her old ways. But much to his dismay, despair, and detriment, to add insult and injury to his already miserable situation, he soon discovers how entrenched and immersed she is with her own and old lifestyle. In other words:

• she comes home late

• she wakes up in strange and unfamiliar places

• she favors other lovers and runs after other men

• she sales her body and gives herself for money

• she stands at the corner of 5th and 9th in red the district though she is married to the Pastor of the largest local church

• she performs cheap favors on men and makes a living on her back rather than cultivating her mind

What does Hosea do and what is his response? He doesn’t have his attorney issue a divorce decree/He doesn’t put a hit out on her/He doesn’t run over her with his SUV/He doesn’t beat her and abuse her.

But the prophet, her husband, goes after her and nurses her back to health. Why? Because he loves her. Over and over again, she is unfaithful; but the prophet, is faithful to the commitment of the marriage. Now before you point your religious scalpels and point your pious finger and become too hard on Gomer, I know you are saying ‘Wow…how can a woman who has a husband to love her like this be that unfaithful?’ Before you beat down Gomer the Harlot—let me take this opportunity to remind you that there is some Gomer in you.